About comfort zones

“Do one thing every day that
scares you”, Eleanor Roosevelt said or “A comfort zone is a beautiful place,
but nothing grow’s there”, a popular quote you run into while scrolling through
all social media. But what is it about comfort zones? And how do you define the
borders of your own?

“If I really want something, I have to take action.”

Melody Wilding wrote an inspiring article (“Please stop telling me to leave my comfort zone”) about the comfort zone in The Boundaries Issue of the Anxy Magazine. She “learned the hard way to define – and, more important, to honor – the boundaries of my comfort zone.” A friend of mine showed me this article and asked what I thought about it. I do admit, this article raised mixed feelings about my own ideas about staying in or leaving my comfort zone. I do know that leaving it – leaving my anxiety about it aside – makes me eventually enjoy the meetings with new people and impressions, because I know that it triggers my creativity and boosts my career. A comfort zone though, offers a basis of rest and it allows me to grow healthy and gradual.

This article also reminded me about an introvert and rather shy student I once supervised. He absolutely needed comfort and it was difficult for him to look beyond the borders of his comfort zone. After a while, at a point he started to see his own possibilities, he said to me: “If I really want something, I have to take action.” And this is exactly the path I wish to follow with Scriptiewijzer and buro dijkstra while supervising.

buro dijkstra & comfort zones

Together with the students and young professionals, I try to figure out which choices need action and therefore, which steps have to be made out of one’s own comfort zone. If you step ‘blindly’ out of your comfort zone, it results too many times in nothing. This doesn’t help you grow as an individual. Or as Wilding put is, “it means taking on challenges deliberately, but only after having thought long and hard about my qualifications and carefully laying out each step. It means playing to my strengths.” This summarizes everything for me. Dare to choose, then you dare to make the steps you need to take.